The working end of one of my experimental 2.2GHz
Yagi aerials made of 2mm brass rod, cable ties and glue!
This amplifies the signals by 5 times from one direction and blocks
interference from most other directions.

You will notice that I do not sell any parts on these
pages, the whole idea is to save money not spend it! However I do realise
that some people will want to buy things to boost their 3G broadband. So
this page is to suggest that you be careful what you buy. Some of the items
sold on places like eBay are worse than useless and are sold at astounding
prices, probably based on the idea that the more people pay the batter they
will think the item is! Some items however work well and can be almost as
cheap as making it yourself. The Yagi aerial sold by ChinaRF for £15
does work, and works very well. I recommend you look at their web site on
eBay
http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/chinarf/ Their Wi-Fi booster aerial (about
£13) also works well giving a range of many hundreds of metres point to
point. So you could send your Wi-Fi all over your farm or to a cottage or
whatever but some other items sold do not! Email me if
you want help, but please remember that I may be unable to reply immediately.

These are pictures of the "works" of an external
aerial that is sold by many places on the internet. The one shown here was
purchased (not by me I hasten to add) at the astounding price of £45! It was
given to me to take apart and "repair" as the buyer said his signal was
better without it! Looking inside we can see that the parts to make this
aerial probably cost £2 trade so you can see that the manufacturer and
retailer both made a handsome profit on this particular sale! Exactly,
precisely the same thing can be bought elsewhere on the internet for £7, so
LOOK AROUND before opening your wallet. Even £7 is £7 too much though as
this design works very poorly indeed, possibly because they used the wrong
type of printed circuit board. You would get the same increase in signal by
putting your dongle beside the window on a long USB cable bought from a 99p
shop. Better still use
my "coat hanger" design now on Page 2 of this site which should not cost
more than £1 to make including the wire and plug. Some items are advertised by people who have no idea
whatsoever what they are selling and who blindly copy any writeups that they
can find on the internet. Some do it by mistake, others couldn't care that
they are misleading you.

The aerial shown above is widely advertised as having a 12dB
gain. In other words it should boost the signals both to and from the 3G
base station by at least 4 times. The one given to me doesn't! In fact a look inside
indicates that it is not possible to get this much amplification from this
design. They have even left out a vital part that makes the aerial "talk" to
the cable properly. This "balun" as it is called is essential ( you can see
one on my aerial at the top of the page, it's the extra loop of wire) but
they have not bothered to include one on the £45 model! I put one on to see
if it helped but it only made a slight increase, still nowhere near the
advertised 12dB boost.

The next warning concerns the use of Wi-Fi aerials,
boosters etc. Some people think (and some sellers are happy to encourage the
idea) that a Wi-Fi aerial will work on a 3G dongle. It will not! Never, no
way! The reason is wavelength. All aerials have to be made to work at a
certain wavelength. That's everything from TV aerials to short wave
transmitters. Wi-Fi works at a different frequency to 3G dongles so there is
little chance of it helping. Save your money! p.s. If you have a Wi-Fi
aerial then you can try it as the wire on its own might give you a slight
power boost but please don't waste money and buy one! Wi-Fi Yagi booster
aerials do though work well for Wi-Fi.